Convention News (150)
J-POP SUMMIT 2016 Details Japanese Pop Inspired Fashion Events & Programming
Written by Ken Dubois
J-POP SUMMIT 2016, one of the world's biggest Japanese pop culture events, announces a dynamic showcase of inspired Japanese fashion at this year's festival. This year, the J-POP SUMMIT gathers a colorful vanguard of edgy and unique Japanese fashion labels and purveyors.
During Anime Expo, Aniplex of America announced that they will be hosting a new type of anime convention at Little Tokyo in Los Angeles on October 15th & 16th. The Event will include exclusive film screenings, expert panels and workshops, playable video game demos, technology demos, cosplay contests, themed cafés, exclusive merchandise offers, Japanese food and beverages, and much more!
Hit sensation Spiral Cats has released their tentative schedule along with some additional details during their appearance at Anime Expo 2016. Limited merchandise and autographs will be available at the Cosplay Photographers booth #4426.
Spiral Cats Returns to Los Angeles Anime Expo 2016
Written by Theodore Mak
Returning to Anime Expo 2016 is the stunningly beautiful professional cosplay duo of Doremi and Tasha from the South Korean cosplay group Spiral Cats. Famous for their amazingly accurate depictions of video game and anime characters including League of Legends, Starcraft, Blade & Soul and most recently Blizzard's Overwatch. They have gained international stardom through appearances and partnerships at countless international events, advertisements and broadcasting/reporting on multiple gaming events.
As part of their 25th anniversary event Anime Expo and parent organization the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation has announced a new initiative titled the "Youth Protection Program" (YPP). On the surface its intent is to provide a fun, safe place for its attendees but it has raised a number of issues including actual effectiveness, timing, and cost. We will take a look at some of the benefits it brings about as well as some of the potential pitfalls.
With just a few days until Anime Boston starting, who are you most excited to see this year? If you loved some of the recent favorites and older favorites in Anime like Love Live, Your Lie In April, Kill la Kill, Code Geass, or Idolm@ster Million Live, then there’s probably a guest that will be appearing at Anime Boston you wouldn’t want to miss. Stay tuned with The-O Network as we provide on site coverage of the guests and concerts that will be happening this weekend.
For more information check out Anime Boston’s home page.
For their seventh anniversary, The-O Network is proud to announce that they will be collaborating with the South Korean cosplay design firm 2AO Design to bring the amazing cosplay talents of Aza and Hori to the United States as guests during Anime Expo 2015, the nation's largest anime and manga convention convention held July 2- July 5 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Known for their stunningly beautiful cosplay work, Aza and Hori, have risen to cosplay stardom through their modeling work with the South Korean cosplay design firm 2AO Design. Making their mark by working with both amateur and professional photographers alike, their extensive portfolio includes Oreimo, League of Legends, Sailor Moon and many more. Recently, Aza was selected as the Korean representative for the 2014 World Cosplay Summit.
Since the J-POP Summit first started 2009, local Bay Area residents have been treated to a special one-of-a-kind event celebrating Japanese fashion, anime, art and of course J-POP. From its humble beginnings featuring small Japanese indie bands, along with the first U.S. premiere of Hatsune Miku, to its now considerable presence, it has been a wonderful delight watching the festival grow into one of the premiere San Francisco events. This year especially as it featured a top tier guest lineup that included Tomomi Itano, May'n, Tokyo Girls Style, YANAKIKU, human beatbox DAICHI and many more thousands of enthusiastic fans packed the streets of the famous San Francisco landmark. However, the performances were not the only main reason to attend it as there were also the food and ramen festivals. Both of which contributed to some growing pains for the festival that not even the upper managers were able to clearly foresee during its infant planning stages.
Izumi Matsumoto to Attend Japan Expo USA 2nd Impact
Written by Jason Young
Fans of old school manga and anime, take heed! Japan Expo USA has decided to kick it old school this year by inviting legendary mangaka Izumi Matsumoto as a Guest of Honor to Japan Expo Second Impact in San Mateo. Famous for helping to pioneer the harem genre back in the 1980s with his work in Kimagure Orange Road, his celebrated resume includes titles such as Milk Report, Comic Gunbuster, Sesame Street and Black Moon. Matsumoto will be meeting fans at the festival for both a conference and signings.
For more information on Japan Expo USA 2nd Impact, visit: http://www.japan-expo.org/
Reki Kawahara, abec, Kazuma Miki Press Conference Anime Expo 2014
Written by Benjamin Chu
Sword Art Online/Accel World creator Reki Kawahara returns to the United States, this time accompanied by Sword Art Online original character designer and illustrator abec, and editor/producer for Sword Art Online's light novel/anime Kazuma Miki.
Certain questions and responses have been abbreviated or paraphrased for clarity and to avoid confusion.
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Can't make it the Anime Expo 2014 or just want to enhance your con-going experience at North America's largest anime convention with the click of a button? Then be sure to check out all of the awesome coverage that we're going to be doing over the next few upcoming weeks!
Highlights will include: an interview with the illustrious and charming duo of Tasha and Doremi from the talented female cosplay group Spiral Cats, as well as interviews with the wonderful J-POP starlet Eir Aoi (Sword Art Online, Kill la Kill) and doujin artist Luna Tsukigami!
Anime Expo 2014 to Host Special Kill la Kill Event and Concert
Written by Jason Young
Earlier today, Aniplex of America and Sony Music Entertainment announced that they will be hosting a special Kill la Kill event at Anime Expo 2014 in Los Angeles on Friday, July 4th. The event will include a talk session with multiple guests from the series, a premiere screening for the first episode of the Kill la Kill English dub and a concert featuring Eir Aoi whose songs "Sirius" and "Sanbika" were featured in Studio Trigger's twenty-four episode animated series.
Sorry folks for the lack of updates, we ran into some issues last week; including some major hardware meltdown! We've got that all sorted out now and all of us here at T-ONO are hard at work on interviews, videos, photos, and more from Japan Expo. Making sure that we bring you the quality content you've come to expect from us.
We were able to interview the absolutely adorable all-girl dance group JDee'Z, the awesome idol group Dempagumi.inc that could give The IdolM@ster a run for their money, the legendary famed video game composer Noriyuki Iwadare, artist Tatsuro Iwamoto who created the characters for the Ace Attorney series, artist Yusuke Kozaki who did the character designs for Fire Emblem: Awakening and No More Heroes and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto who created some of anime's most iconic characters for the cult-classic series Evangelion!
We'll be releasing our coverage starting this week so stay tuned! In the meantime, please visit our twitter page to check all the tweets we posted from the event!
Noriyuki Iwadare – A Live Performance at Japan Expo USA
Written by Nujtxeng Vang
Japan Expo, a festival showcasing Japanese culture that annually takes place in Paris, France, recently made its debut in the United States. Known as Japan Expo USA, it was held at the Santa Clara Convention in Santa Clara, California from August 23rd to the 25th. Among the many international guests who made the trip oversea, renown video game composer Noriyuki Iwadare made quite an impression – particularly in terms of his concert.